The Prime Minister says the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a goer as far as Australia and New Zealand are concerned, but says there are nine other countries to work around.

Bill English says there will be meetings between trade ministers over the next couple of months.

At a media conference over the weekend, he said New Zealand and Australia would work together to convince other TPP members to progress the deal, following the withdrawal of the US.

He told Mike Hosking a lot of the other countries have been set to get these gains and want to deliver growth to their economies, just like we do.

"We think it's possible, a bit of confidence starting with us, and we may find Singapore's pretty interested in it as well, and we'll see where it goes from there, but it's not going to be that easy."

Meanwhile, English is promising to have a hard look at what went wrong with communications about the Port Hills fires, but said there are always going to be differences of opinion.

Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee has slammed the Christchurch and Selwyn mayors for taking so long to declare an emergency, and says the fire highlights the need to review and improve civil defence.

English said there's always a tension between local knowledge and a central decision-making process in Civil Defence.

He said the more centralised that decision-making is, the more likely it is it doesn't actually know what's going on.

LISTEN ABOVE AS PRIME MINISTER BILL ENGLISH SPEAKS WITH MIKE HOSKING